[320] Aurengzêb captured Surat by a similar device, and to the great astonishment of the inhabitants.
[321] According to Diodôros this happened in the neighbourhood of Harmatelia, for conjectures as to the position of which see Note T. Strabo says it happened in the country of the Oreitai.
[322] It has been thought this name may be constructed from Maharâjah, “great king.” For identification of Patala see Note U.
[323] This island is called by Arrian Killouta, and by Plutarch Skilloustis. See Note on Arrian, p. 164.
[325] This lake, however, was discovered neither on this voyage nor on this arm of the Indus, but during a subsequent voyage which Alexander made down the eastern arm.
[326] “No magnificent idea,” says Vincent, “is requisite to conceive the building of cities in the East. A fort or citadel with a mud wall to mark the circumference of the pettah or town is all that falls to the share of the founder. The habitations are raised in a few days or hours.... The Soldan of Egypt insults Timour by telling him: ‘The cities of the East are built of mud, and ephemeral; ours in Syria and Egypt are of stone, and eternal.’”
[327] Nearchos with the fleet rejoined the army at a point on the river, Pasitigris or Karun, near the modern village of Ahwaz, where was a bridge by which Alexander led his army from Persis to Sousa, where he arrived February 324 B.C.
[328] The Alexandreia of Diodôros, and probably also the Alexandreia which, as we learn from Pliny (vi. 25), was built by Leonnatos by Alexander’s orders on the confines of the Arian nation. It may also be the fifteenth of the Alexandreias of Stephanos Byz., which he places in the country of the Arachosians next to India. It was perhaps, however, the Portus Alexandri, now Karâchi, where Nearchos was detained by the prevalence of the monsoon for twenty-four days.
[329] Hence their name Ichthyophagoi. They inhabited the maritime parts of the Oreitai and Gedrosians. In sailing along their coast Nearchos and his men suffered great hardships from scarcity of provisions. See Arrian’s Indika, 24-31. Much may also be read of this people in Strabo, Pliny, Ailianos, and Agatharchides.
[330] Arrian (vi. 27) says, however, that Phrataphernes brought the provisions spontaneously. Diodôros is at one with Curtius on the point.
[331] This description is much overdrawn. Thirlwall thus remarks upon it: “We cannot wonder that, in the enjoyment of pleasures, from which they had been so long debarred, they abandoned themselves to some excesses, perhaps only following the example of their chiefs and of Alexander himself;” and this was probably the main ground of fact for the exaggeration of later writers.
[332] Arrian alludes to his execution in his Indika, c. 36.
[333] This happened at Mazaga, the capital of Assakênos. Plutarch, it will be seen, justly condemns Alexander for this gross violation of the compact into which he had entered with the Indian mercenaries.
[335] Aphrikês is called Eryx by Curtius.
[336] More correctly Omphis as given by Curtius. See Biog. Appendix, s.v. Omphis.
[337] The father of Omphis had quite recently died, and Omphis did not assume the sovereignty at once on his decease, but waited till Alexander sanctioned his doing so. He then, as a matter of course, along with the sovereignty assumed also the dynastic title Taxilês.
[338] Alexander’s campaign, in which he conquered the country extending from the Hindu Kush to the Indus, took place in the year 327 B.C. In the year following he marched eastward through the Panjâb as far as the Hyphasis, conquering on his way Pôros and the Kathaians, and from the Hyphasis he retraced his way to the Hydaspês. He then sailed down that river, and then down the Akesinês into which it falls, until about the end of the year he reached the Indus. It will be seen from Arrian, v. 19, that the battle with Pôros was fought in the archonship of Hêgemôn at Athens, whose year of office, it is otherwise known, extended from the 28th of June 327 to the 17th of July 326 B.C. Hêgemôn was succeeded by Chremês, so that Diodôros antedates his archonship. He was archon after the defeat of Pôros and not before. With regard to the two consuls named, it does not appear that they ever held the consulship simultaneously. Publius Cornelius (Scipio Barbatus) was consul in 328 B.C. along with C. Plautius Decianus. In the following year Spurius Postumius Albinus was master of the horse to the Dictator Claudius Marcellus, but I can find nowhere in the lists the name of Aulus Postumius as holding any office about that time. In Smith’s Classical Dictionary the year 327 B.C. appears as the annus mirabilis of Alexander’s life, for early in the spring he completes the conquest of Sogdiana and marries Roxana. Thereafter he returns to Baktra, then marches to invade India, and crossing the Hydaspês defeats Pôros. He then marches to the Hyphasis, and thence returns to the Hydaspês. In the autumn he sails down the Hydaspês to the Indus! See vol. iii. p. 1346 and vol. i. s.v. Alexander III. The events of two years are thus compressed into the space of a single year. Clinton’s chronology, which is very confused for the period from 327 to 323, seems to have been followed.
[339] His name appears in Arrian more correctly as Abisares. He may be described as the King of Kashmir.
[342] This is the whip-snake which is thus described in British India of the Edinburgh Cabinet Library, vol. iii. pp. 121, 122: “The whip snake is common to the Concan, where it conceals itself among the foliage of trees, and darts at the cattle grazing below, generally aiming at the eye. A bull, which was thus wounded at Dazagon, tore up the ground with extreme fury, and died in half an hour, foaming at the mouth. The habit of the reptile is truly singular, for it seems to proceed neither from resentment nor from fear, nor yet from the impulse of appetite; but seems, ‘more than any other known fact in natural history, to partake of that frightful and mysterious principle of evil, which tempts our species so often to tyrannize for mere wantonness of power.’”
[345] More correctly Sôphytês. See Biog. Appendix, s.v.
[346] This was also a Spartan institution.
[348] More correctly Phegelas as given by Arrian. See Biog. Appendix, s.v.
[349] Usually called the Hyphasis. It is now the Beäs which joins the Satlej. The name of the Hyphasis was sometimes, however, applied to the united stream, but this is contrary to Sanskrit usage.
[351] The Indian barber (nâpit) belonged to the Sudra or servile caste. Besides the duties proper to his calling, he has other avocations, his services being often required for the performance of certain domestic ceremonies such as those connected with marriage, etc.
[352] “Kallisthenes adds (after the exaggerating style of tragedy) that when Apollo had deserted the oracle among the Branchidai, on the temple being plundered by the Branchidai (who espoused the party of the Persians in the time of Xerxes), and the spring had failed, it then reappeared on the arrival of Alexander; that the ambassadors also of the Milesians carried back to Memphis numerous answers of the oracle respecting the descent of Alexander from Jupiter, and the future victory which he should obtain at Arbela, the death of Darius, and the political changes at Lacedaemon” (Strabo, XVII. i. 43). See also Introd. p. 28.
[353] Properly the Gangaridai.
[354] Diodôros should have said the Hydaspês.
[358] See Curtius, ix. 4.
[359] This happened at the junction of the Akesinês with the Hydaspês and not with the Indus, as here represented. For the contest of Achilles with the Simoeis and Skamander, see the twenty-first book of the Iliad.
[360] The Oxydrakai.
[361] “The two races (Oxydrakai and Malloi) were composed of widely different elements, for the name of one appears to have been derived from that of the Sudra caste; and it is certain that the Brahmins were predominant in the other. We can easily understand why they did not intermarry, and were seldom at peace with each other, and that their mutual hostility was only suspended by the common danger which now threatened their independence.”—Thirlwall’s Hist. of Greece, vii. c. 54.
[362] Called Horratas by Curtius.
[366] Cunningham inclines to believe that the Massanoi of Diodôros are the Musarnoi of Ptolemy, whose name, he says, still exists in the district of Muzarka to the west of the Indus below Mithankot. See his Anc. Geog. of Ind. p. 254.
[375] All these particulars are recorded at length in the Indika of Arrian, from c. 24 to c. 31.
[376] Generally called Parthia, then a small state.
[377] Drangianê, now the province of Seistan. The inhabitants Drangoi, and also Zarangoi. Drangianê was separated from Gedrôsia by the Baitian mountains, now called the Washati.
[378] Areia was a small province included in Ariana which embraced nearly the whole of ancient Persia. The name is connected with the Indian word ârya, “noble” or “excellent.” It occupied the tract from Meshed to Herat.
[379] Arrian, however, relates in his Indika (c. 23), that Leonnatos defeated the Oreitai and their allies in a great battle in which all the leaders and 6000 men were slain, while his own loss was very trifling.
[380] Arrian gives in his Indika (c. 33-35) full details of the journey of Nearchos from the coast to Alexander’s camp, which lay a five days’ march inland, and of the affecting interview between the king and his admiral, whom he had given up for lost. Arrian’s narrative may be implicitly trusted, as it was based on the Journal of Nearchos, whose veracity is unimpeachable. The admiral did not appear in the theatre until his interview with Alexander had been concluded. Diodôros is clearly in error in placing Salmous on the coast.
[381] This incident occurred at Mazaga, the capital of Assakênos.
[382] The Brahmans of Sindh are here referred to.
[383] “When the Greek writers tell us that the district between the Hydaspes and the Hyphasis alone contained 5000 cities (!), none of which was less than that of Cos (Strabo, xv. p. 686), and that the dominions of Pôros, which were confined between the Hydaspes and the Acesines—a tract not more than 40 miles in width—contained 300 cities (id. p. 698), it is evident that the Greeks were misled by the exaggerated reports so common with all Orientals, and which were greedily swallowed by the historians of Alexander with a view of magnifying the exploits of the great conqueror.”—Bunbury, Hist. of Anc. Geog. I. p. 453.
[385] This seems an almost inexcusable mistake on Plutarch’s part—his conducting Alexander as far as the Ganges! The author of the Periplûs made the same egregious blunder. It is possible, however, to put a different construction on the expressions used by Plutarch, and to suppose that he wrote so carelessly that he did not mean what his words seem to imply.
[387] More correctly Sandrakyptos, or Chandragupta. See Biog. Appendix, s.v. Sandrokottos.
[389] See Biog. Appendix, s.v. Sandrokottos.
[390] This was the wall of the citadel, not of the city, as Plutarch represents.
[391] This fact, attested by all the historians, confirms the truth of the reports as to the great skill of the Indians in archery.
[392] Called Timaeus by Curtius, p. 240.
[393] He is called Sambos by Arrian, and was the ruler of the mountainous region west of the Indus, having Sindimana for his capital, the city now called Sehwan. See Biog. Appendix, s.v. Sambos.
[394] “He (Alexander) caused ten Indian philosophers, whom the Greeks called gymnosophists, and who were naked as apes, to be seized. He proposes to them questions worthy of the gallant Mercury of Visé, promising them with all seriousness that the one who answered worst would be hanged the first, after which the others would follow in their order. This is like Nabuchodonosor, who absolutely wished to slay the Magians if they did not divine one of his dreams which he had forgotten, or the Calif of The Thousand and One Nights who was to strangle his wife when she came to the end of her stories. But it is Plutarch who tells this silly story; we must respect it; he was a Greek” (Voltaire, Dict. Phil. s.v. Alexandre). See also Note Hh, Indian Gymnosophists.
[395] The interviews of Onesikritos with the Indian philosophers took place earlier than is here stated—when Alexander was at Taxila.
[396] Called Killouta by Arrian. The native name has not otherwise been preserved. The city which Pliny calls Xylenopolis was probably situated in Killouta, and was the naval station whence Nearchos started on his voyage. The name means “city of wood.”
[397] Arrian relates in his Indika (c. 26) that Nearchos in the course of his voyage, having landed at a place on the Gedrôsian coast called Kalama, received from the natives a present of sheep and fish. The admiral recorded that the mutton had a fishy taste like the flesh of sea-birds, because for want of grass the sheep were fed on fish.
[402] The Adrestae are the Adraïstai of Arrian. See Note on that author, p. 116. The Gesteani seem to be the Kathaians. The Praesidae must be the Prasians (though Saint-Martin would identify them with the Praesti of Curtius), and the Gangaridae the people of Lower Bengal.
[403] The river reached was the Hyphasis. How Justin came to call it the Cuphites it is difficult to understand. Can he have had in his recollection the Kâbul river, called sometimes by the classical writers the Kuphes, with Kuphet as the stem for the oblique cases, and mistaken it for the river which arrested Alexander’s progress? Like Plutarch, he erroneously supposes that the Macedonian army was confronted with a great host encamped on the opposite bank of the river.
[404] Hydaspes he should have said.
[407] By the Ambri must be meant the Malli, and by the Sigambri the Oxydrakai. The text must be corrupt.
[408] This is supposed to be a corrupt reading for Ambiregis, in which case Ambi is a mistake for Sambi. We know that the incident referred to happened in the dominions of this king. In Orosius (iii. 19) the name is transcribed as Ambiraren.
[409] Nothing is known of this city, unless it be, as Cunningham thinks, the Barbari of Ptolemy, and the Barbarike Emporium of the author of the Periplûs. See his Anc. Geog. p. 295.
[410] Nandrum has been here substituted for the common reading Alexandrum, which Gutschmid (Rhein. Mus. 12, 261) has shown to be an error.
[411] Quoted by Heitland in the original.
[412] Ibid.
[413] The Râmâyana (ii. 70. 21) mentions among the Kaikeyas, “the dogs bred in the palace, gifted with the strength of the tiger and of huge body” (Dunck. iv. p. 403).
[414] Referring to the terms in which he was summoned to go to Alexander. He was to go to “the son of Zeus.”
[415] According to Dr. Bellew this name is the Greek equivalent of the Persian Mâhîkhorân, “fish-eaters,” still surviving in the modern Makrân. [Since the above note was written the cause of Eastern learning and research has suffered a grievous loss by the death of this distinguished Orientalist, whose work on the Ethnology of Afghanistan will prove a lasting monument to his fame. The work discusses inter alia the ethnic affinities of the various races with which Alexander came into contact during his Asiatic expedition.]
[416] Major E. Mockler, the political agent of Makrân, contributed some years ago to the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society a valuable paper on the identification of places on this coast mentioned by Arrian, Ptolemy, and Marcian, in which he corrected some errors into which the commentators on these authors had fallen.
[417] A slight emendation of the reading (suggested by Schwanbeck) restores the passage to sense, making Arrian say that Sandrokottos was greater even than Pôros.
[418] It seems that Pôros, after Alexander’s death, had possessed himself of the satrapy of the Lower Indus, held till then by Peithôn son of Agênôr.
[419] The passage states that Amitrochates, the king of the Indians, wrote to Antiochos asking that king to buy and send him sweet wine, dried figs, and a sophist; and that Antiochos replied: We shall send you the figs and the wine, but in Greece the laws forbid a sophist to be sold. Athênaios quotes Hêgêsander as his authority.